Values and Vaccines

Recommendation

Take-Aways

• Scientists and journalists often treat parents who reject vaccination for their children as ignorant or willfully “antiscience.”
• Vaccination works both to immunize an individual from disease and to create “herd immunity”: When the majority of people vaccinate, it cuts down on chances that an infection will spread widely if someone contracts the disease.
• The risk of bad reactions to a vaccine is low, but they do occur – sometimes with serious results. Some parents don’t regard the danger to society as more important than the risk which a given vaccine may pose to their own children.

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